Swedish Death Cleaning

This week, I was inspired by something called “Swedish Death Cleaning”.  I stumbled across it watching YouTube videos about organizing and read a really short book about it from a Swedish author.

It is, in essence, cleaning and organizing your house as if you were going to die and you don’t want to leave a bunch of unwanted stuff for your family to go through.

2021 has been a year that really got me thinking about being prepared for sickness and death.  I think as you get older, you start to think about these things, but I have also this year had to deal with taking care of things for a family member and being completely at a loss because nothing was organized.  I managed to bumble my way through it, but it wasn’t pretty.

Which means that Swedish Death Cleaning really spoke to me.

To move forward with it, I made a list of all the things that I have been putting off (for years) that someone else would have to go through if I were gone.

Things like:

• Paper files that need to be sorted and shredded
• Photos that need to be organized and in some cases, thrown out, from back in the old film days.  I have giant bins of them.
• Old electronics that need to be recycled

There are also things like making sure my Will and end of life documents are updated, as well as making sure I have a plan for Flirt if something were to happen to me.  I want to make sure she is taken care of and her life isn’t upended too much if I were to get really sick or if I were gone.

I know, really morbid things to think about.  But my experiences this year have made me want to be prepared.  I am a planner after all.

Everything got added to a projects list and I am committed to doing something off that list every weekend for at least an hour.  It is not a huge goal, but I figure if I am going to do these things that I really don’t want to do, an hour seems much larger than it actually is.  Especially if I add it to all the normal weekend tasks and other things that actually make me happy like sewing and crafting.

I am happy to report that this week, I completed my hour and there is now a document that has all of Flirt’s info in it and it has been shared with the appropriate people.  They will know her vet contact and her likes/dislikes.  It makes me feel a whole lot better for her.

There is still a lot to do.  Sometimes it can feel a little overwhelming but when I break it down to small tasks, it is a little bit better.

Be prepared to get an update each week on what has been done.  I need to be accountable to you guys or this stuff will never get done.  I am hoping that you might also get some tips out of this in case you want to organize or do your own death cleaning.

I hope that you all have a good week, whatever that means to you!